Design Council are busy bees apparently

Recently I read an article on the Design council’s website written by the CEO David Kester advocating support for design businesses to help boost the economy, as indeed we should expect of the Design council

It was a good article by and large. However I found myself agreeing more with the commentators than I did with the article itself.

This is what David had to say:-

“So what does
this mean for economic policy? It needs to say, ‘people first’. The
customer or the citizen must be at the very centre of everything we
create. Our companies and public services have to provide more choice and
better experience using the best and latest technologies.”

Well, as for giving customers what they want, I'm reminded than a once great industrialist said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse".

Now I'm not suggesting that all customers don't know what they want, but I am certain all customers know what they don't want. Also the same with choice is in my experience somewhat different. So many times too much choice confuses and delays decision. Mostly these pitfalls are circumvented by good design. Sadly most design is actually quite poor.

Never fear however, because given time enough, the consumer let us know what designs are bad. The article upholds Apple as some sort of bastion of all things good with design and customer service, but just look how long it took for the public to proclaim the short comings of the illustrious Apple's iPhone4.

The article also slated UK manufacturing stating

“on what should
we build our (economic) plan? What will be our bread and butter for the
next hundred years? And please don’t say manufacturing because the numbers
just don’t stack up. “

Well I’m quite staggered. Yes its true our manufacturing has declined from 25% of 50 years ago to 9% of GDP today, but those that remain are some of the very best in the world and compete well on price and much better on quality. What good is a product in a world that is sustainability aware, if the cheap import lasts but a year or the alternative at twice the money lasts five or more? Consumers are becoming increasingly aware not just of environmental sustainability, but more recently of economic sustainability. Here in the UK we are at the cutting edge of sustainable design.

And finally; to echo the sentiments of one of the commentators, Maxine Horn et.al. regarding funding for UK businesses. I am increasingly frustrated that my clients looking for some assistance find the bureaucratic and time consuming hoops they have to leap through, to finally get a refusal because they have asked for too little seems to me that the many events (media friendly parties) that are staged are more focused on protecting the organisations own funding stream than they are in helping others. One I know of has a £9m budget to help 50 businesses get funding. Yes, that’s right, they don’t actually give any funding, they only help companies get it from another source and thus far have been alarmingly ineffective at anything other than quaffing champagne.

As a QANGO we could assume that the DC is vulnerable to cuts in funding, but then I suppose it depends on who writes the reports and who they in turn know as to how vulnerable the DC really is. Personally I see it much the same as others. An expensive toothless tiger more interested in media exposure to help retain its own place in the system.

If I am wrong then the DC should put its money where its mouth is and, to quote, the Design Council’s £150,000 per year CEO, David Kester;

“That means taking some risks and backing key sectors rather than picking winners. Here one has to make a distinction between the sources of wealth and the enablers that we will depend on.”

Then how about this? Start putting funds into the bee hive and stop spending on the bee keeper

You can read the article here